When At Work, Act Like It: SEC Employees Browsed Porn, Ran Private Businesses

A recent report on the Internet and extracurricular activities of Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees serves as an important reminder on how important it is to abide by the Internet and Workplace codes of conduct.  Given the (much deserved) media scrutiny over the SEC’s lack of oversight on the Madoff scandal, more attention has also been paid to a recent SEC Inspector General’s report on the conduct of SEC employees.

ProPublica.Com: The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a drubbing these days for its abject failure―despite detailed tips―to catch Bernie Madoff in what appears to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history.

Now, thanks to little-noticed report from the agency’s inspector general, we have a detailed glimpse into other bad behavior by some SEC employees.

The report, released the day after Thanksgiving, reveals that some employees at the agency were clearly preoccupied with matters other than their mission of “protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets.” The semi-annual report to Congress, which covers the period from this past April to September, details among other things a handful of employees circumventing internal controls to download porn. Let’s pause for some detail:

[Investigators] uncovered evidence that an employee who was still in his probationary period had used his SEC laptop computer to attempt to access Internet websites classified as containing pornography, resulting in hundreds of access denials. The OIG investigation also disclosed that this employee successfully bypassed the Commission’s Internet filter by using a flash drive.

The Internet records every action, every webpage accessed, every email sent, and almost all clandestine attempts to delete them.  As we develop into our careers, and make significant inroads in our fields, we must be careful in the electronic bread crumbs we leave.  I’m sure these SEC employees never thought they would be found out, or that their “side hustle” wasn’t a big deal, certainly not a fire-able offense.  However, the way these investigations go, its not so much about what they are looking for, its what they find in the search.  So we must go above and beyond to ensure that we don’t become collateral damage.

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